Peter Bradford Benchley (May 8, 1940 – February 11, 2006) was an American author, best known for his novel Jaws and its subsequent film adaptation, the latter co-written by Benchley (with Carl Gottlieb) and directed by Steven Spielberg. Several more of his works were also adapted for cinema, including The Deep, The Island, Beast, and White Shark.
If I had known then what I know now about sharks, I would not have been able to write 'Jaws'.
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Fact
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He was nominated for the 2016 New Jersey Hall of Fame in the Arts and Letters category.
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For Jaws (1975), he was paid $175,000 for the book and screenplay with escalator clauses that brought his total for film rights to about $250,000. In addition he received 10% of the production's net profits, which was approximately $10 million. He received another $1 million for the book's foreign sales, as of 1976.
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His first book was a children's book called, Jonathon Visits the White House.
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Member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Writers Branch)
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Graduated from Harvard University in 1961
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Became a conservationist and expressed regret over portraying sharks as killing machines as he did in his first novel Jaws. The book sold over twenty million copies and was made into the big-screen classic Jaws (1975).
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After graduating from Harvard University in 1961 he became a reporter at the Washington Post then worked as an editor at Newsweek. He later went to the White House where he wrote difficult speeches about the Vietnam War for President Lyndon Johnson.
$4 Million
